The former West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt grew up as a devout Anglophile, yet he clashed heavily and repeatedly with his British counterparts Wilson, Callaghan, and Thatcher during his time in office. Helmut Schmidt and British-German Relations looks at Schmidt's personal experience to explore how and why Britain and Germany rarely saw eye to eye over European integration, uncovering the two countries' deeply competing visions and incompatible strategies for post-war Europe. But it also zooms out to reveal the remarkable extent of simultaneous British-German cooperation in fostering joint European interests on the wider international stage, not least within the transatlantic alliance against the background of a worsening superpower relationship. By connecting these two key areas of bilateral cooperation, Mathias Haeussler offers a major reinterpretation of the bilateral relationship under Schmidt, relevant to anybody interested in British-German relations, European integration, and the Cold War.

This book examines external perceptions of the Franco-German relationship, both from a historical perspective and as a driving force for regional integration. By providing various country and regional studies, it analyses the various types of perception and self-perception in several regions around the globe. Here, Franco-German cooperation serves as a mirror in which third-party countries view their own situation, today and in the future. The contributions address the questions of if and how the Franco-German reconciliation and cooperation is perceived as a role model for other regions, especially for the reconciliation of other inter-state and international conflicts. A concluding chapter highlights the divergences and convergences between the respective conflicts, and proposes recommendations for actors involved in diplomacy and international relations. The book is intended to provide scientific support for the implementation of the Franco-German Aachen Treaty of January 2019. It will appeal to scholars in political science and cultural studies, and to anyone interested in learning more about the Franco-German relationship and on external perspectives on it.

The Oxford Handbook of the European Union brings together numerous acknowledged specialists in their field to provide a comprehensive and clear assessment of the nature, evolution, workings, and impact of European integration.

The young Helmut Schmidt and British-German relations, 1945-74 -- Harold Wilson, 1974-76 -- James Callaghan, 1976-79 -- Margaret Thatcher, 1979-82.

Helmut Schmidt is the neglected chancellor of modern German history, overshadowed by 'the greats' - Bismarck, Adenauer, Brandt and Kohl. This volume retrieves Schmidt's true significance as a pivotal figure who helped reshape the global order during the crisis-ridden 1970s. This major reinterpretation, based on detailed research in Schmidt's private papers and numerous archives in Europe and America, reveals him as a leader equally skilled in economics and security, and adept at personal diplomacy, who dared to act as a 'double interpreter' between the superpowers during the nadir of the Cold War. Schmidt was no mere 'crisis-manager': in fact he brought to the chancellorship a depth of reflection, evident in two decades of writings and speeches that justifies considering him an intellectual statesman on a par with Henry Kissinger. His achievements were prodigious. Hailed as the 'world economist', Schmidt helped create the G7 forum for global economic governance and the European Monetary System at a time when capitalism seemed on the rocks. And as the 'strategist of balance', he designed NATO's 'dual-track' response to the crisis caused by the massive Soviet arms buildup of Euro-missiles. This decision, Kristina Spohr argues, played a crucial part in holding together the Western alliance and paved the way to defusing the Cold War in Europe. Schmidt brought his country to the top table of world politics - what he unashamedly called Weltpolitik - as an equal of the wartime victor powers. It was through his Chancellorship that West Germany came of age on the global stage.

Using previously classified documents and original interviews, The Other Alliance examines the channels of cooperation between American and West German student movements throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, and the reactions these relationships provoked from the U.S. government. Revising the standard narratives of American and West German social mobilization, Martin Klimke demonstrates the strong transnational connections between New Left groups on both sides of the Atlantic. Klimke shows that the cold war partnership of the American and German governments was mirrored by a coalition of rebelling counterelites, whose common political origins and opposition to the Vietnam War played a vital role in generating dissent in the United States and Europe. American protest techniques such as the "sit-in" or "teach-in" became crucial components of the main organization driving student activism in West Germany--the German Socialist Student League--and motivated American and German student activists to construct networks against global imperialism. Klimke traces the impact that Black Power and Germany's unresolved National Socialist past had on the German student movement; he investigates how U.S. government agencies, such as the State Department's Interagency Youth Committee, advised American policymakers on confrontations with student unrest abroad; and he highlights the challenges student protesters posed to cold war alliances. Exploring the catalysts of cross-pollination between student protest movements on two continents, The Other Alliance is a pioneering work of transnational history.

German-American relations have become interesting again. U.S. President Donald Trump’s lukewarm policy toward Europe has ensured that the relationship between Berlin and Washington is once again regarded as an important field of scholarship within global politics. And yet it was only a few years ago that German-American relations seemed to take second place to transatlantic relations in general, and the European Union (EU)–USA relationship in particular. The advent of Donald Trump as US President in January 2017 has made all the difference. Trump’s difficult personal relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and his denigration of everything the Western world – including the USA itself – has stood for since 1949, have given a new significance to German-American relations in practice and theory. This volume offers an empirical and conceptual analysis of German-American relations in the 21st century and highlights the serious and perhaps unprecedented challenges the two countries face at present. The authors discuss a number of aspects of the current, much more fragile state of German-American relations from different perspectives. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal German Politics.